WP83 Understanding the value of milk, juice & water: The interactional construction & use of healthy beverages in a multi-ethnic classroom

This article treats the socialization into healthy food practices in a Danish multi-ethnic kindergarten classroom. I analyze three situations where the health value of milk, water, and juice is topicalized. Health is considered a cultural, social, moral, and linguistic concept. It is culturally embedded but linguistically defined, constructed, and negotiated, and the understanding of health differs widely. I discuss how learning outcomes in health educational activities depend on individuals? understandings prior to interactions as well as on the process of co-ordinating these understandings through language. Also, I show that in children?s health conversations nutritional value becomes an interactional resource. Last, I discuss the role of health education in terms of wider processes of social exclusion and intercultural (mis)understandings. The article falls within the ethnographic linguistic framework (Creese, 2008). The primary data consist of ethnographic fieldnotes and audio-recordings, and recorded examples are subjected to micro-analysis.